


The Careless Goddess

by nightrose



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-12
Updated: 2009-10-12
Packaged: 2017-10-21 14:50:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightrose/pseuds/nightrose





	The Careless Goddess

_**The Careless Goddess**_  
 **Title** : The Careless Goddess  
 **Author** : nightrose_spn  
 **Pairing** : Sam/Dean  
 **Genre** : Romance/Angst  
 **Rating** : R  
 **Word Count** : 4988  
 **Warnings** : potential character death, mild wincest  
 **Summary** : They twine all too tightly to one another.  
 **Author’s Notes** : I totally did not write this during school today, in case anyone was wondering. –cough- anyway, please review!

 **  
She braids her long hair neatly, tying the ends with undyed ribbon. Her teeth are brushed shining clean. Her dress of equally colorless wool falls to the ground, rippling gently. She spares a swift glance at herself, in the mirror, and smiles.  
She looks good. That’s important, for today. Today is her big day, her chance to shine. For just under a millennium, she’s been working steadily. Every day, she weaves threads together, simple, mundane people.  
William Gardner, for instance. She’s just tied a new thread between his and his wife’s the other day. Their daughter, Melanie, will live a normal life. Her strand did not have a soul-mate, unfortunately, only brief knots to other threads. A new life will be born from one of them, a delicate blue-gold daughter who will die young.  
She knows all this intimately. She can still feel the texture of the lives beneath her fingertips. It plays the double part of duty and high honor to weave lives together, and yet… yet she aches for something more.  
Today, she gets it.  
The manager of her particular cavern of the underworld is a grandchild of one of the original three Fates. She’s taken a brief vacation. Talk around the looms is that she’s gone off to find the mortal’s god.  
She’s not sure she believes the other women. (All women, who weave history together. Fabric has always been women’s work, whether it is the simple clothes she wears or the lives she snips off with her scissors.)  
It matters not where the manager went. Only that she is here now, that today she has the power to spin a deeper destiny than one ordinary life. Today she shapes a strand in the fabric of forever.  
She steps, light and graceful, down the corridor. Her loom is waiting.  
She takes her breakfast quickly, downing a steaming cup of tea to wake her from her night’s rest as she walks to the room where the threads await.  
The first one she spins is that of a young boy—seemingly an ordinary sort of man. His bright-blue soul is darkened by the pain of war, but it twines quickly, eagerly, full of youthful urges to _live_. She feels her fingers sing when she finds his perfect match. The woman’s strand is ghost-pale, shadowed by unearthly light, yet it all but leaps to be spun with its match. She lets happiness dance from her heart to their twining. It warms her to create a match so perfect.  
The otherworldly taint leaves the woman’s strand as new strands spring from their joining. The first is jade-green with a shimmering finish, all simplicity and strength. Later, (but only a blink of an eye to her) a snow-white soul joins its brother. They vibrate with power in her hand. She has never touched threads anything like this, only seen them from afar on rare, sacred occasions. These are souls that will shape the world. This is the most important task she has ever had.  
The silver-pale mother thread reaches its end. Tragedy strikes in a hot burst of flame. She grieves for the lost sweetness of love as it chars and crumbles, staining the blue thread with the darkness of grief. As she reaches out to snip the thread, there is dye on her fingers from last night’s work. She brushes the younger child’s thread accidentally, leaving a black stain on his pure soul.  
She watches his father’s darkened life seek out the terrors of the night. Her scissors snip them one by one, neat and swift as the strikes of his knife.  
Those poor children grow alone, without the sheltering tangles of a parent’s love around them. The jade-green thread winds around its brother. Their joining makes a parody of a parent’s protectiveness—no less assured and honest, but inherently heartbreaking. (The older strand is still so short… in mortal terms, four years old.)  
The brother-twining cannot protect the younger from the stain in his soul, but he still tangles close. Powerless to pull out the stain, but he won’t give up, only throws his soul tighter to his brother’s green, as much a part of the white as the dark taint is.  
It is good. They will need this closeness to get them through the war to come, dark tragedy days with severed strands snapping at them like grain in a breeze. She smiles as they pull tightly together, and then it strikes her with all the force of a physical blow.  
The way they knot together is no brothers’ bond. Soul-deep and irreversible, leaving no room between them for some delicate female strand to weave one of them into normalcy. It sickens her—she has made such a mistake.  
She reaches in with her hands and yanks at the knots that tie their souls together. Pulling hard at it, she manages to create a tiny fragment of space between them. Physical distance, perhaps…  
“Stop!”**

(If she freezes instinctively at the sharp cry, this is their fate.)

There was a time when I had something solid and stable and absolutely sure. In my life, built against a background of interchangeable and ever-shifting motel rooms, curved around the huge space left by the loss of my mother, there was one thing I could count on. Dad was always darting in and out of the shadows, never more than a momentary presence.  
One thing, though, I could cling to. From the second he was placed in my arms, I could hold him close. There was a promise inherent in the task. If I could protect him well enough, he would stay. If I could keep him safe from every kind of pain, he wouldn’t leave me. If I could love him more than anything, he’d care enough not to abandon me.  
For years, that was true. At least when I was still technically a child, it was enough. Dad was impermanent, no more solid than the ghosts he disappeared to chase. Mom was a fading memory, like the charred photograph of her Dad kept hidden in the bottom of his duffel. Sammy, though, Sammy was there. He was concrete and real. I could touch him, reach out for him, and he’d let me.  
People say that parents give their children “unconditional love.” I’ve never had that. No one ever sheltered me. Without any frame of reference, though, I imagine it’s something like what I feel for Sammy. Everything I never got, I could give to him. Everything I wanted, he could have.  
I find the papers shoved under his pillow one bright morning. Carefully, without waking him, I pull them out from the dead weight of his head. His signature is already at the bottom, my fate scaled by that one illegible scribble.  
He’s leaving.  
Quickly, desperately, I run through the mental roster of my reality. I haven’t failed him, not since the shtriga attack he doesn’t even remember. There’s only one reason, then, that he could want to leave.  
He knows.  
Sammy knows. Shame boils up at that thought. It’s more than I can bear, crippling pain down to my soul. He’s going to leave now and it’s _only fair_ , It’s no more than I should get, for these things I want.  
I’m just sick inside, that’s all. I don’t know how I got this way. I wish there was some curse, some cause I could name and cure, but there isn’t. It’s just me. I’ve always been like this. Wrong, twisted… even evil.  
Of course Sammy wants to leave. It’s only fair, only what I deserve.  
I don’t quite manage to choke back the sobs in my throat. There’s too much. I am losing everything I’ve ever had to cling to. There is nothing less than abject agony, and I decide it’s barely worth trying. The sound must wake Sam up. He glances at me, and looks with an expression I can only define as pity. “You found the acceptance letter, then.”  
“Yeah.” I want to demand ‘why?’, want to forbid him to go, want to trap him close and not _let_ him go. But I know. I know.  
“I’m sorry.”  
I don’t deserve his guilt. Not with all these things I want to do. “No. I get it.”  
He laughs, brief and bitter. “I doubt it. You’d never think of anything like this.”  
Those quiet, hurt words sound almost like the ones vibrating at the tip of my tongue, but it can’t be true. I’m just looking for some slight kind of comfort. It’s understandable, after all, with the whole world crumbling, everything I’ve ever had to cling to falling apart underneath us.  
The second-worst fear I have is coming true. Sammy knows and he’s leaving because of it. I want to beg him not to go, but maybe it is for the best. Maybe, if he stayed, the worst thing possible could happen. Maybe something terrible, unthinkable would come from my hands almost without my permission. Maybe I’d hurt him. With that fear sinking like a bullet in me, I’m glad he’s going. No matter how much it hurts me, it’s better than me ever doing… that.  
I’ll let him go. Still, without my permission, my mouth starts talking. “Do you hate me?”  
“What? No, of course not, I could never…” He looks like this is hurting him, too. I regret my thoughtlessness immediately. “Dean, that’s not why I’m leaving. It’s not your fault.”  
Except that it is. “You’re sure about that?”  
“No.” Sam’s lips are a tight line. “I didn’t want to have to say this. I’m a coward, I guess, hoping to sneak out of our lives without saying…” A tear leaks out of his eye and I move to brush it away. He jerks back. “Don’t touch me!”  
“Sorry.” I turn away, facing the wall.  
“Dean.” He sighs. “I guess it’s actually easier to say this if I don’t have to look at you.” I can hear the deep sound as he draws in a breath. “I’m in love with you.”  
My breath, on the other hand, stops completely. I can’t find my lungs. But there’s something much more inherent than my desires, something drilled into me. I turn right around, pull Sam into my arms, and speak the words that have been hiding between us for so many years. “I love you.”  
It’s the first time I’ve ever said the words aloud, but the truth has dominated my whole life. It’s simple, natural, for me to reassure him as he cries against my shoulder. “Sorry, so sorry, never should’ve…”  
I cut him off, unable to listen to him in the abject pain I’ve been so familiar with for so long. “No. Shh… don’t.” Like he’s a baby again, crying in fear as we run together through the burning night. “Don’t cry, Sammy. I gotcha. Shh. It’s all right.”  
“You’re my brother. It’s not all right.”  
I’ve told myself that so many times. “Doesn’t change how I feel about you.”  
“Right.” He smirks, vicious and hurting. “Like you can still look at me knowing I want…”  
“No. Doesn’t change how I feel about you.” And I kiss him, long and deep, with all the pent-up passion of ten years of frustrated lust. He makes a soft sound of understanding against my lips and sighs back into my arms.  
“You really…”  
“Yes.” I don’t let him worry about it, not even for a moment, stealing away all his worry with our second kiss. This one is all sweet and gentle, like the start of something new. “Not going to let you go now,” I assure him, wicked smirk in my voice. “You don’t get to leave me.”  
He nods slowly, and then murmurs, “Why would I want to?”

 _His wife kicks him under the table. “Put the damn paper down, William.”  
He grumbles, but obeys.  
“Look, we’ve got new neighbors. We ought to go say hello.”  
“Sure, honey.”  
She picks up the cookies she made them, and he accompanies her across the hallway to the recently occupied apartment. William knocks on the door.  
A good-looking man, with bright green eyes, opens it. He is in his early thirties, a strange amulet on his chest over an ordinary T-shirt. “Hey.” He turns over his shoulder and calls out, “Sammy!”  
“Hi. I’m William Gardner. This is my wife, Susan. We came to say hello, introduce ourselves.”  
“I brought cookies,” Susan adds. The man smiles brightly.  
“You two come on in, then.” He bellows back into the apartment, “Sammy, cookies!”  
A younger man lopes out to join them. He’s very tall, with shaggy brown hair and a great dimpled smile, though obviously shyer than his partner.  
“I’m Dean, by the way. Dean Winchester. This is my husband, Sam.” Dean’s gaze practically dares William to say something, but he doesn’t, of course. He has nothing wrong with gay people, especially not two as normal and happy as these are.  
Dean’s arm snakes around Sam’s waist, and Sam flashes a stunning smile down at him. “Sit down, please.”  
“Oh, we can’t. Just came to stop by—William has to get back to his morning paper.” It’s an almost obsessive habit with him.  
They smile and say their goodbyes. The last William sees of them is Sam’s back against the door with Dean’s arms around him._

 **The two simply tangle back together as the bright-blue father winds to its end. She gives up, choosing another path. She must work quickly. She tugs at the darkness inside the white soul, letting it fill and stain even more of the thread.  
Her superior runs full-speed and pushes her away from her work. “Do you know what you have done?”  
She staggers to her knees, watches nimble, wise hands begin to knit them back together. “Brothers,” she whispers. There is a deep horror in it. They should never be bound like that. It was a grave mistake to ever let it happen.  
“No, you fool. You’ve just ended the world!”  
“They twined-“  
“Exactly as they were meant to! Have you ever seen a twining quite like that?”  
And she quiets her protests, because she hasn’t. Perhaps it was not her error that made them twist together. Perhaps it is meant to be, ordained by whatever power defines the threads of all the living.  
“You _may_ have ended the world,” her superior amends. “If I cannot reverse this, if they do not act on this bond between them, then fire and darkness…”  
**  
(That is one way their tale could so easily end.)  
Everywhere, the fire. Air burns against my skin, molten sulfur in the atmosphere, stinging and painful. The air, the sun, my skin, all burning. As the world perishes, all I can think of is that I’m dying alone. But then, I never expected it to be any other way. I can see the body I never got to have standing not twenty feet in front of me. The devil has dressed Sam’s corpse in that stupid white suit, blood flowing neatly around to avoid his feet so it doesn’t stain his pristine white loafers.  
I burn. Want consumes me in a new, terrifying way. I’ve ached for that face so many times before, but not, never, like this. I’ve craved so many forbidden things, so much, would have done anything for his kiss, the softness of his skin under my fingertips. Now I look at him and all I see is what’s inside, and I want to rip the skin apart so I can destroy that dark shadow. I want to hurt him, and that thought may be more fundamentally disturbing than the end of the world.  
“Dean,” he utters, thunderous over the silence that millions of death-screams have become to my jaded ears.  
I’m not sure what there is to say. What you call the devil in your brother’s skin.  
“Oh, Dean.” Crash of lightning like tears overhead. “I’m still him, you know. Just changed. I won’t lie, maybe corrupted a little, but also perfected. I’m not afraid anymore. Not of being who I am and not of getting what I want.” Teasing lust in his voice as he corrects himself, “What we want.”  
“God, no,” I whisper, because no man should ever have to see his fantasies come true like this.  
“No God,” he mocks, turning my own words around on me. “Not anymore. Just me, big brother… me and you.”  
My stomach turns because I can’t bear this. Not this offer of all my hidden dreams, from this shell that looks like Sammy.  
“Come with me,” he says. “Help me.”  
“Help you…”  
“Cleanse this madness. Wash the world.” Like billions of lives are a stain of dust on his white suit.  
“No,” I lie, and he gives me a slow smile.  
“I’ll rule everything, Dean. Plant flowers over the ashes of war and teach people to tend them with care and joy. I’m going to fix this, Dean. And I want your help.”  
“Sam…” And since when does he let himself call the Antichrist by his brother’s name?  
“I want you by my side, Dean. At my right hand when I hold court and warming my bed at night.” So casually, he mentions that aching desire we’ve shared silently, never acting on it or even speaking of it, for so many years. “Keeping me human.”  
“It’s too late for that.” Sam’s eyes are white now, sometimes, just like Lilith’s. Fallen-Angel white, and I think that’s all-too appropriate. My angel, sweet innocent Sammy who was always perfect, always everything good, is now… just the opposite.  
“Humane, then. Remind me what life is, brother. Tell me about things like pity and mercy and love.”  
“You aren’t Sam,” I accuse.  
“No. But I’m all that’s left.” His eyes are kind and understanding, like he sympathizes with my pain to the utmost. “And if you don’t give me what I want, Dean?” He shrugs. “I’ll just take it anyway.”  
I stand frozen, rigid, locked in his gaze. Such soft eyes. It’s Sammy in that moment, trapped in that body that someone else is controlling, looking at me gentle and full of hopeful love.  
“Just give in, Dean. You’re mine, you know that…”  
And I do. There’s only been one choice all along. Slowly, deliberately, I sink to one knee. The dark-eyed army cheers out hisses. He closes the distance between us swiftly. His hands lock around me, pulling me into his chest, and I whisper, “I love you, Sammy.” We both know it’s not directed at the body that’s touching me right now. It’s a good-bye, because my Sammy is dead. This is his corpse holding me close. Sammy’s dead body buried under bloodlust and evil.  
Sam kisses me, harsh and possessive, lips claiming mine hard. I let him do it, lay his mark on me, with the world burning around us. I’ll let him do whatever he wants, this demon who killed Sammy, because here’s the thing.  
I’ve lost my little brother before.  
And I always bring him back.  
Death is nothing.  
I’ll save him. I will.  
I cling to that thought as he cradles me close, laughing happily, carefree into my hair as the sky goes dark.  
“Hell on Earth,” he says, contented. “For you and me.”  
“Sammy,” I answer, helpless.  
His eyes are bright, bright white against the pitch-black world. His voice is so soft and gentle as he chastises, “Dean, you know that’s not my name anymore.

 _William Gardner is not crying into his morning paper, because that would be a stupid thing for a man to do. Men don’t cover their shame in newsprint, because that’s just silly. Just because Sarah Palin was elected president yesterday doesn’t mean the world is really ending. Because of the Croatoan virus. And the demon sightings. And everything else these black-and-white letters say all too clearly.  
The world is ending.  
He’s an ordinary kind of guy. There isn’t much he can do about this. He just watches, looks through the pages, and thinks about that old joke. “Black and white and red all over.”  
The punchline was never “the newspaper of the apocalypse,” but it seems appropriate right about now._

 **Her superior has been playing with destiny for millennia. Why is this not working?  
“Of course! You spun them into being… only you can sever the threads. That is the only way we can save the fabric of the world.”  
Her own soul, red-bright thread, twists in her chest. She has hurt these tormented lives, poor strands with nothing to cling to but one another. She should never have torn at their bond—what else do they have? Heart sick, aching to her soul with guilt and grief, she turns back to the loom. Darkness has piled in the hole between them, a wound in the very fabric of existence. It is so vicious and bitter it might well tear the world apart, and it would take that much force to damage the bond between them.  
Twisted so tight they might as well be one and she, she was the one who destroyed it. Her eyes close in grief as she works, her hands dancing over the strands. She tries to undo the harm she has done, but it is too late to spin them back into their bonds.  
She cannot. It is too late. Either the dark stain will swell up and destroy them, or they must be cut off. Her heart breaks to do it, and she lifts up the bright scissors and clips them apart.**

(All bindings must find their end.)

When Sam was still Sammy, this used to drive me crazy. The tiny warm bundle snuggling into my arms, chubby fingers stroking at my face, round baby lips pressing at any available inch of my skin. I would grumble at his clumsy touches, try to push him away. We’re boys. Boys don’t _cuddle_. I totally didn’t secretly love the way he molded to me like we weren’t even two separate people, the way he’d come to me after a nightmare and trust me to drive away the fear with nothing more than the strength of my arms around him.  
Sammy would fall asleep on top of me, his head on my shoulder. I’d stay up all night, watching carefully. When he came to my bed at night, I knew he needed me to look after him, and that was far more important than sleep. Watchful, I’d look out into the blackness, breathing in his baby-powder smell, feeling the rise and swell of his chest. His hair would fall in gentle strands across my face. His skin, soft as clouds, would press against mine. As he slept, I could feel everything in me with the warmth and knowledge, the absolute surety, that there is nothing I would not do to protect this small, trusting body curled in my arms. I would kill anything, anyone. I would die with a smile on my face. There is nothing that could keep me from my solemn duty of safeguarding his sweet, dimpled smile, his steady heartbeat, the innocence in his eyes.  
Childhood is long over now. He’ll always be Sammy to me, but I (occasionally) refrain from saying the nickname he pretends to hate aloud. As much as he’s grown, despite the war wounds in his wide eyes now, there are nights when I’m reminded of four-year-old Sammy curling against me. He still has nightmares, but they’re real now. He still trusts me to take away the fear, but sometimes it costs me more than swallowing my stupid pride and hugging my baby brother.  
His body fits against mine differently now. His hair is still too damn long, and it gets in my face. Even though he’s bigger, he still snuggles into my arms like they can protect him from everything bad in the world. There are hairs and scars across his skin now, marks of shared and separate years, of growing, fighting together. His eyes aren’t quite so huge in his face. He doesn’t press casual kisses against my skin anymore. The unspoken, aching longing between us prevents that.  
His trust is a heavier burden now, because there’s more than vengeful ghosts and Dad’s drunken anger to protect him from. All the forces of heaven and hell are lined up to destroy this treasure in my arms. My Sammy. He’ll always be a child to me—I think that may be why I could never bring myself to touch him _like that_ no matter how much we both wanted it. He’ll always be my responsibility, something precious for me to protect.  
And there’s only one way I can save him now. Like always, a knife and my determination, soul-sure, will be enough. But I’d never thought I would have to wield them like this. I have to save Sammy from himself. I can’t watch him become a monster, and there’s only one way to do that.  
It’s so good to have him back in my arms, after a year of wandering down separate paths, alone as the world started to crumble and burn. We couldn’t save it, couldn’t undo it. I called in favors, talked to a few old friends from the pit, and found one answer alone. One way to send the devil back where he belongs.  
His vessel has to die before Lucifer can have him. The vessel must die at the hands of someone blessed by an angel… and the one person that vessel loves most, the one they trust with their very soul, is the only one who can send that soul to heaven. Well, guess who fits in both those categories?  
Sammy had found out, somehow. It had been months since I’d heard from him when I got the message on my answering machine.  
“You have to do it, Dean. Please. Just… just make it fast. I can’t let all these innocent people die. I’m in Ohio. Come find me.”  
I learned something I’d already known about myself that day. I’d rather let six billion people burn than hurt Sammy. Still, I’d done what he’d asked, driven to Ohio and found him in a sleazy motel like the ones that have played the backdrop for our entire lives. I comforted him, laughed with him, and finally let him fall asleep in my arms.  
Now, I know it’s time. Nearly midnight, the world dark and still outside our warm huddle. I reach out and take what I’ve wanted for so long. From Sam’s lips, parted in sleep, I steal a sweet, slow kiss. His eyes flutter open, and he sees the gun in my left hand. His eyes close again. He tilts his head back in a parody of rapture, exposing his long neck for whatever fatal blow I deliver. I press my lips to all that skin, again and again, tasting salt and skin. He lets out a shaking breath and I steal it away on another kiss, still so gentle, as I pull my arms tighter around him, locking him into a ferocious embrace. “Dean?” he says, just the barest touch of fear in his voice. He knows that a gunshot wound isn’t always the easiest way to go—not exactly the peace we’d let ourselves hope for, for just those few days.  
I trace my fingers through his long hair. “Shh, Sammy. I’ve got you.” It only takes one quick slice. The knife he gave me for my seventeenth birthday is in my right hand, hidden beneath the sheets, and it slices through his femoral artery neatly. I hear the sound of the puncture, but it’s better than watching a sickening second smile be carved into his neck.  
He bleeds out quickly, no pain. His red blood soaks through my fingers. I promise softly, “You should’ve known I’d never hurt you.”  
I smooth out the faint line between his eyebrows with a kiss to his forehead, and then lift my head. My lips are at the edge of his ear. I can’t say the words aloud. They’ve been hiding in the air between us, unspoken, for our whole lives. I can barely force them out in a nearly inaudible whisper. “Love you, Sammy. God, I love you.”  
He’s dead. Lying, in my arms, dead.  
I swore to myself I would never let this happen. I pull him close for a moment, and it’s nothing like the same as having my brother snuggle against me. I say it again. “I love you.”  
We did it. We saved the world, me and my Sammy.  
I smile and lift the gun, heavy in my hand. Fast, painless to die with a quick dash of the blade, because I could never hurt Sammy. Different for me. More precision required. Have to get the job done.  
The bullet rings out, then…  
Silence.

 _William Gardner is an ordinary man. He has never been anything else. His wife’s dropping their youngest off at school—poor little Melanie’s been having some trouble with bullies on the bus. He snaps open the paper as he sips his coffee.  
Shocking story, really. It’s been all over the news for weeks, especially in a little town like this. Some man who’d been holed up in a motel room for a month was just found dead, with another body in the room. Murder-suicide, apparently.  
Two brothers. Those serial killers they’d thought were dead already, years ago. This time they’ve got bodies to prove it.  
William’s glad.  
The world’s safer without people like that in it. His little girl will have one less thing to be afraid of. _   



End file.
